Within this scenario, India’s
drive to ramp up its own solar capacity may provide a lifeline for the
industry. India plans to build an initial capacity of 1 GW by 2013,
enough to power close to 1mn homes. It would then add 3-10 GW by 2017, before
aiming to hit capacity of 20 GW by 2022.
While India’s high irradiation advantage
unlike Europe make it ideal for harnessing solar energy as compared to Europe,
nevertheless, what costs will it come with?
Small solar can certainly fit very nicely
into particular niches, such as off-grid energy production e.g. solar water
heaters for buildings. The government proposes to make it mandatory for telecom
operators to transform their cellphone towers from being powered by diesel
generators to solar panels. There are estimated 250,000-cellphone towers, which
consume 3-5 kilowatts power or 530 million gallons of diesel every year.
These off-grid solar applications depend on
solar cells and panels that directly convert sunlight into energy, whose
critical raw materials, including for silicon wafer, India does not possess.
China controls almost 75% of the global market of these supplies that makes
India dependent on a country that it is considered by our foreign office, at
best, a fair weather neighbour. The implications are that this will lead to an
increase of government subsidies in applications like solar heaters or increase
in consumer expenditure as in the case of applications like solar cellphone
towers where service providers will be forced to raise tariffs to recover
costs.
What the European experience has clearly
demonstrated that while solar can somewhat justify small, off-grid
applications, there is never had been an economic justification for large
gridded solar power projects that mostly depend upon solar thermal technology that
through mirrors focus the sun’s energy on a liquid that, when heated, drives a
steam turbine. Three such SPSS grid based power stations are coming up in the
country - West Bengal (2MW); New Delhi (1MW) and Karnataka (3MW) with some
other plants totally with 10 MW capacities under planning.
While India is a manufacturer of solar
concentrator collectors for solar thermal energy, its industry is
underdeveloped in terms of technology. Instead of first building up
technological capacity, by opting to expand generation capacities at breakneck
speed, the outcome of governmental policy, leave bigger foreign firms with the
competitive advantage in execution of these contracts. Jobs are exported out of
the country instead of creating new ones within it. These projects are foreign
exchange intensive. And worse still, the breakneck speed threatens to repeat
the dilemma Spain found itself with – low quality and poorly designed solar
plants that needed to be subsidized indefinitely as they may never produce
efficient green energy on their own.
India also did not take
cognizance how the feed-in tariff structure adopted in Europe proved a rip off,
particularly in the absence of a strong regulatory and enforcement regime.
These tariffs represent the premium that nations are willing to pay for clean
electricity. They are fixed at a set rate for, in the case of Spain, a period
of 25 years for particular renewable-energy technologies. The tariffs typically
drop each year, thus encouraging early adopters.
I know solar is very interesting topic to learn.Its very nice.I like this site.Its excellent.As of now, solar power and solar related devices are expensive. But it may be reduced if most of the people start using it. Let us see the future of solar power.
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